Mass Effect: The Board Game is about tactics, not kissing

Board games based on popular video game licenses, such as the recently released Border areasare — more often than not — a bit shit. The worst offenders are those who want to port the gameplay experience note for note from a PC or console directly to an analog format. That’s why I find Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Requestsnow available from Modiphius Entertainment, so interesting.

The game, from award-winning designer Eric Lang (Blood Rage, Living in Reterra) and die-hard Mass Effect fan Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫 (Crazy Rich Asians), feels like a Mass Effect game, with difficult and impactful decisions around every corner. But it also knows what it is: a dice-based, action-oriented quest that simulates just a small slice of a much larger universe. It tickles the tactical sci-fi-centric lobes of my brain, no doubt magnified by years of turn-based games like X-COM: UFO Defense and his descendants, in a delightful way. And I’m curious to see where the publisher takes things from here.

Mass Effect: The Board Game takes place during the events of Mass Effect 3but doesn’t directly represent a specific mission in that game. As such, the first playthrough has an air of mystery, as players explore a crashed Cerberus research vessel without really knowing what awaits them. This is a campaign game, but not in the traditional sense. There aren’t 100-plus missions that will take your group months or years to complete. This is a tight arc of three to five missions – and each mission should only take about 30 to 45 minutes to complete.

Yes, it’s a campaign game that you could theoretically play in one sitting. That excites you on a deep, emotional level, or makes you angry enough to rip a phone book in half. I think it works, even if you pay a little more for a more concise experience.

The core mechanics are very board game-like, which I like. At the start of your turn, you roll a set of 12 hardy custom dice, then deal three of those dice on your character sheet and pass the rest to the right. You might need two exclamation points to fire your weapon twice, to clear a few shells from outside a complex; or you might need to allocate a die with multiple arrows to go to an open door; or you might use a special blue exclamation point to activate a special ability. You can even do all three, or some combination. As long as you have empty spaces on your sheet and dice to fill them, the world is your oyster.

Should one of your teammates go down, however, they take three of those dice with them and lock them on their character sheet until you can revive them. Lose a second ally and you’re down to half your dice, stuck on your feet and rolling uphill at terrible odds. At the same time, enemies are spawning on the map at a breakneck pace. It’s fast, frantic, and fluid. Expect a bit of a learning curve. The core rulebook is a glossy, magazine-sized thing with 40+ pages to digest before—or during—your first playthrough. But if you can stomach that much instructional content, you’re in for a real Mass Effect-esque treat.

The campaign itself is pretty clever. Each playthrough contains three core missions and two potential loyalty missions. The game features a narrative book with numbered passages that you read aloud as you make your way through the branching story. There’s a leveling system that increases the player’s abilities mid-mission, unlocking interesting new play styles along the way. Mass Effect: The Board Game even offers powerful advantages to playing as either a Paragon or a Renegade (though, as in the video game, splitting the difference between the two isn’t as rewarding). Best of all, cooperation is key, with the exception here being that you’re actually given time to think things through before coming under fire.

As a product, it also seems to have been designed with potential expansion in mind. Instead of modular cardboard tiles, the game maps come bundled in a spiral-bound notebook. The cost of producing another one is likely to be quite low, making add-ons and expansions for this core set all but inevitable.

Another interesting thing about Mass Effect: The Board Game is that it is inherently single player. If you want to work through it all by yourself in an afternoon, that is a perfectly sensible choice. In fact, once you have put the hours in, you are completely free from the manual when you sit down with your friends for another session. Or you can just keep speedrunning the game yourself and try to get the highest score possible over and over again.

The only downside? No kissing. Well, I guess you could hold the miniatures up and make some kissy faces if you wanted to. But that’s beneath you, right?

Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Requests is now available for pre-order. The game was reviewed using a retail copy from Modiphius Entertainment. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You may additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.